The Shanksville Deception of 9-11

Updated February 4, 2010

Something incredibly ugly happened to Flight 93 over rural Pennsylvania on 9-11. A mass murder atrocity could explain why the public was deceived into thinking that a small crater was the crash site while the bodies of the victims and wreckage were actually being picked up from the real debris field hundreds of meters away in the dark woods. How many victims were there anyway? Two hundred? Why was the wreckage of Flight 93 kept hidden?

The scene of the crime. The small crater in the reclaimed mine is a useful diversion. The real debris field is several hundred meters in the woods. Why would the government go to such lengths to keep the press and county coroner away from the evidence? How many people were on Flight 93 when it was shot down - as Donald Rumsfeld openly admitted?

The people of Somerset, Pennsylvania, are loyal and patriotic Americans, qualities that have been exploited by the perpetrators of 9-11 to conceal the truth of what happened in the sky over the woods of Shanksville on 9-11. Shanksville is the nearest hamlet to the so-called crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, a small crater in a reclaimed mine between Lambertsville and Shanksville.

Having been to the area several times since 9-11, I noticed that many of the people were noticably afraid to talk about the things they had seen and noticed around Shanksville on September 11, 2001. Several of them apologized and told me that they had been told by the F.B.I. or other agents of the U.S. government not to talk. From others I got the clear impression that they had been warned not to talk about what they knew. Then there are those who had obviously been told to tell lies. I would consider Bob Leverknight to be a member of the latter group. As I reported from Somerset:

I spoke with Bob Leverknight, correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, at the newspaper's office about how Flight 93 disappeared into the crater without leaving a trace. Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard, was assigned by the editor to handle my questions. His answers were quite incredible. About the disappearance of the plane, Leverknight said, "It [the ground] liquefied." One of the plane's massive engines, he said, "bounced" off the ground and was found at a very considerable distance -- in the woods.

The ground did not liquefy and swallow the plane as Bob Leverknight told me at the office of the Daily American and nothing bounced off the ground. These are just some of the lies that surround the deception of what really happened above Shanksville on 9-11.

There was no wreckage of an airplane found anywhere near the small crater that had been made in a trench of the reclaimed mine. The real debris field was several hundred meters in the woods. But why was it kept hidden?

THE HIDDEN DEBRIS FIELD

The debris of Flight 93 fell in the woods and covered a large area. This is the real debris field and was kept hidden from the view of the public and the press while the bodies and evidence were picked up. The small crater in the reclaimed mine was most likely caused by a missile fired from the Thunderbolt aircraft that was seen circling the area before and after Flight 93 was shot down over the woods.

The small round crater measured 20 feet in width. The long gash was apparently pre-existing in the reclaimed mine. A clever ruse, but not at all convincing.

The pre-existing trench is visible in this 1994 U.S.G.S (United States Geological Survey) map of the reclaimed mine. The crater was made directly in the middle of the trench, which suggests that this location had been carefully chosen for the Flight 93 shoot down. Were all the passengers from the different planes of 9-11 loaded onto this doomed plane at Cleveland airport?

This crater was made in the middle of the trench to provide a plausible diversion that looked like the scene of a plane crash albeit without any wreckage. The bomb crater was made directly in the middle of the pre-existing trench which indicates that the Shanksville shoot down had been carefully planned in advance. The public was told that the plane had crashed at the site of the crater while the real debris field was located in the woods beginning at a distance of about 100 meters in the woods, around the cottage of Barry Hoover.

Barry Hoover's cabin, where body parts were found according to Rev. Larry Hoover, is at least one hundred meters from the crater - deep in the woods. There is no way that pieces of an airliner, luggage, and human remains flew for hundreds of meters through the thickly wooded forest. The shock wave that devastated the Hoover cottage - and the plane - clearly came from above the woods, not from this crater in the reclaimed mine. One hundred meters of thick woods would have protected the Hoover house from the shock wave and the trees would have lost much of their foliage. Apart from the scorched area near the crater, the trees appear to be in good condition.

The Dayton Daily News of September 12, 2001, described the scene:

The impact of the crash left a crater estimated by authorities to be about 10 feet deep and 20 feet wide. It appeared the plane first hit on the downward slope of a hillside and then slid at least 200 yards, scorching a dense area of trees and corn fields. Officials would allow reporters no closer than 300 yards to the scene. From that vantage point, the crater appeared to be barren. Little debris could be seen, and there were no signs of victims.

"We haven't seen anything bigger than a phone book, certainly nothing that would resemble a part of a plane," said Capt. Frank Monaco of the Pennsylvania State Police.

But one Lambertsville resident, Barry Hoover, who lives a half-mile from the site, said he saw debris scattered at least a mile wide.

"There was stuff everywhere back there. It made you want to drop to your knees and cry for those people," Hoover said.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also described the wreckage at the Hoover property:

No people on the ground were killed in that crash. But the shock waves set off by the impact of that crash heavily damaged Hoover's home, which lies, literally, a stone's throw from the crater gouged into the earth by the doomed plane.

"Obviously, I was upset when I saw my house. Who wouldn't be?" said Hoover, 34, whose home off Lambertsville Road is believed to be the local structure most seriously damaged by the crash. "But you know, it's a house and there's nothing there that can't be replaced. The people who died can't be replaced."

...Wreckage was still burning and emergency workers were still speeding to the scene when Hoover neared his house. While it was still standing, every window and door had been blown off and obliterated, its ceilings and floor tiles had been blasted loose and much of the interior was wrecked.

"It looked like what you see after a tornado or hurricane goes through -- a total ruin," he said.

To clarify the location of Barry Hoover's cottage in relation to the crater "crash site" I spoke with Reverend Larry Hoover, a Lutheran minister and father of Barry. Larry Hoover owns the two houses on his property that begins with the treeline at the edge of the reclaimed mine.

The cottage his son Barry lived in is about "one football field" (100 meters) into the woods from the crater, Larry Hoover said. Larry's house is about "three football fields" from the crater, he said. He said that luggage had been found around his house while body parts had been found more around Barry's cottage. The Hoover property is about 7 to 9 acres, he said. The debris was found on property belonging to three people, including the owner of the reclaimed mine.

Rev. Hoover said that he noticed that the garage door of Barry's house had been blown inside out and backwards, something he thought quite remarkable.

I wanted to know why the existence of the real debris field deep in the woods had been kept hidden so I asked Reverend Hoover, "Why have you been quiet about what happened on your property on 9-11?"

"We tried to cooperate," he said. I knew what he meant without pressing the point. The FBI agents had given similar orders all over Shanksville and Somerset County. The Hoovers had been asked not to talk about what had happened on 9-11. The public was told that the plane had crashed into the reclaimed mine while the real debris field was cleaned up in complete secrecy in the woods around the Hoover cabins.

Why has the real debris field been kept secret? There can only be one explanation: the truth about what happened to Flight 93 could not be revealed to the public. The evidence indicates that Flight 93 was shot out of the sky with a blast that sounded like "an atomic bomb," as one witness told me:

Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, said she was the first person to reach the crater. Lensbouer said that the crater was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described the sound as "an explosion, like an atomic bomb" -- not a crash.

If Flight 93 was shot down with such precision, and the truth concealed with an elaborate deception, there are several crucial questions I would ask:

Exactly how many people were on Flight 93?

Did Flight 93 really land in Cleveland on 9-11 and were passengers from other flights put onto the flight before it was shot down?

Is this what really happened to the passengers of Flights 11 and 175?

Why was Wally Miller, the Somerset County Coroner, forced to turn over the "crash" site to the FBI? Why did he abdicate his responsibility for the site and the recovery of the bodies, his obligation under state law? Why was he not even allowed to be involved in the identification of the remains of the passengers of Flight 93, whose death certificates he duly signed?

The evidence certainly indicates that something extremely ugly happened over Shanksville on 9-11 and the evidence of the atrocity was strewn about the woods surrounding the Hoover property. There was only one small survivor from the catastrophe that occurred at Barry Hoover's cottage on 9-11. Woody, Barry Hoover's cat, survived and is still living, eight years later.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Flight 93 had been shot down.

In 2005, I interviewed Viola Saylor of Lambertsville who had seen an aircraft that looked like an A-10 Thunderbolt over Shanksville on 9-11. The following eyewitness accounts of seeing a Thunderbolt are from my article of July 15, 2005, “Eyewitnesses Saw Military Aircraft at Scene of Flight 93”.

Viola Saylor saw Flight 93 pass very low over her house in Lambertsville, which is a mile north of the official crash site. She was in her backyard when she heard a very loud noise and looked up to find herself "nose to nose" with Flight 93, which she says was flying "upside down" as it passed overhead. It was blue and silver, she said, and glistened in the sunlight.

It was so low that it rustled the leaves of her 100-foot maple tree in her yard. It flew southeastwards for about three more seconds and even gained elevation before it crashed over the hill with a "thud," she said. "It was real still for a second," she said. "Then all of a sudden" she saw a "very quiet" and low-flying white "military" plane coming from the area of the crash site, flying towards the northwest. "It was flying very fast, like it was trying to get out of here," she said. "A second or two" behind the "military" plane were two other planes, which Saylor described as "normal" planes.

Shown a photograph of a Fairchild A-10 Thunderbolt II, a low-flying combat aircraft commonly referred to as a "Warthog," Saylor identified it as the military plane she had seen. She said she recognized the two engines on the rear and the distinctive shape of the cockpit and nose of the plane. Similar eyewitness reports of military planes over Shanksville on 9-11 remain censored by the U.S. corporate media, although they were reported in two leading British newspapers.

Several eyewitnesses reported seeing an A-10 Thunderbolt circling the area - before and after - the "crash" of Flight 93.

Susan Mcelwain, a local teacher, also reported seeing a white "military" plane at the scene of the crash before witnessing an explosion. Mcelwain told the Daily Mirror (U.K.) what she saw:

It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50 feet above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was traveling real fast, but hardly made any sound.

Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialed 911 and told them what happened.

I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realized it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.

I didn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.

There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

The plane Mcelwain describes sounds like the Warthog seen by Saylor over Lambertsville. "It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side," Mcelwain said. "I haven't found one like it on the Internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around. Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 feet up. But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40 feet above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."